Nokia Nseries

27th April 2005

Nokia announced the new Nseries range of handsets on 27th April 2005 - a significant move for Nokia for a number of reasons. The Nokia N70, N90 and N91 handsets break with tradition in handset naming, but more significantly they break with some traditions in manufacturing too.

It's a suprising move for Nokia - although the N91 was sort-of expected, the entire Nseries concept is a new one, and it shows fresh thinking and the start of an interesting new direction.

In particular, the Nseries handsets are class leading devices. Too often, Nokia handsets have been behind the rest of the field in technical specifications, but the Nseries are up with the class leaders. Also, Nokia have shown that they are prepared to buy in technologies from the likes of Carl Zeiss (on the N90) rather than keeping everything in house.

These handsets have their faults - the N90 is huge and heavy, the N91 is incredibly ugly and the N70 seems to be a warmed over 6680, but Nokia fans no longer have to make excuses for their favourite manufacturer - these handsets are easily amongst the very best to be announced to date, and with a relatively short wait until they are release, it seems that Nokia have the ability to turn promises into products.

Compare this with Motorola - their recent announcements look great on paper, but they leave a trail of cancelled or terminally late handsets and their high-end handsets are probably still 12 months out. Rivals Samsung just seem to have a muddled product range, and Sony Ericsson have stalled somewhat and still lack any high-end 3G phones like these.

2004 was a bad year for Nokia, but 2005 is shaping up much better. If these new Nseries handsets are anything to go by, then 2006 will be a very good year indeed for this Finnish manufacturer.

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